Have you ever had the Silano pizza at Bertucci’s–the one with broccoli and chicken in a lemon cream sauce? I haven’t had it in years, but always loved it. Now that I feel comfortable making traditional pizza and scacciata, I wanted to try something different and springy. It’s really not difficult, it just takes a few steps–and you can spread them out throughout a Sunday to make it seem even easier.

Here’s a link to the dough. I recommend making it a day or two before and letting it do its thing in the fridge.

Let’s start with the lemon cream sauce on your actual pizza-making day. Make ahead earlier on and refrigerate it till it’s time to use if you like.

Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat. As the butter melts, add the grated lemon zest; stir it around about a minute as it sizzles. Pour in the lemon juice/white wine, add salt, stir and bring the liquids to a simmer. Cover the skillet, and let simmer just a couple of minutes.

Remove the lid, slowly whisk in the cream and add corn starch. Continue to simmer, stirring occasionally, about 2 to 3 minutes you have a thick, creamy sauce. Remove from heat, add nutmeg (if you like) and freshly ground black pepper. If you do refrigerate, you’ll want to warm it up a bit in the microwave so it’s easy to spread over the pie. I used my handy silicone pastry brush to apply super-simply. 🙂

Cut the pieces as evenly as possible, cook at 450 degrees F for 15 minutes. This should leave some of the chicken a bit pink so it’ll finish cooking on top of the pizza instead of drying out.

Slice the chicken to top the pizza.

FOR THE PIZZA TOPPING
About a pound or so of broccoli, cut in pieces–steam for just 2-3 minutes, then remove from heat
Fresh mozzarella (8 oz.), sliced so you can place discs evenly over the top of the pie
3 tablespoons Pecorino Romano
3-4 cloves of garlic, pressed
drizzle olive oil over top of pie

Generously oil a sheet pan.
Press/shape pizza dough into a pan forming a large rectangle or oval–whatever shape begins to form as you even out the dough. Mine is a little of each, HA HA!
Brush lemon sauce over crust.

I baked for just 15 minutes on top of my pizza stone (permanently residing at the bottom of my oven) at 450 degrees F. Take a look at the 15-minute mark to see if yours is ready, too. If not, you may need anywhere up to 5 more minutes–just depends how thin you’re able to press out the dough. I let mine come to room temperature about 30 minutes before I got started, and I think that helped.